Le sexe des indigènes. Adolphe Kocher et la médecine légale en Algérie

Abstract

In 1884, Adolf Kocher, a student of Lacassagne, published a medical thesis entitled De la criminalité chez les Arabes au point de vue de la pratique médico-judiciaire en Algérie (On criminality among the Arabs from the perspective of medico-judicial practice in Algeria). An authentic medico-legal treatise intended for doctors posted in Algeria, this work constitutes one of the first systematic studies, in French, on criminality in a colonial context. A brief review of the context in which medical knowledge encounters the colonial question is followed by discussion of the context of the reception of the thesis. A critical reading unfolds in two parts: first discussing the manner by which this study of criminality envisions – not without paradox – the question of « the Arab’s » criminal repsonsibility. We then show how the Arab gradually becomes the exemplar of the criminal type, based mainly on the medico-legal category of offenses against public decency. How far may one go in supporting the study of indigenous sexuality as an edifying contrast to western standards without definitively indexing it to an exclusive set of pathological varieties?

Keywords

• Algeria
• Colonialism
• Crime
• Forensic Medicine
• Sexuality